Most states have an interesting mix of “artificial” (geometric) borders and natural (rivers, mountain ranges) borders. (Notable exceptions: Colorado, Wyoming, & Utah. Did they just get bored making them? :D)
Some of the more irregular-shaped states have weird little cuts into their neighbors; e.g., Massachusetts’ little notch into Connecticut, Missouri’s notch into Arkansas, Minnesota’s notch into Ontario/Manitoba.
Does anyone have interesting facts about how these or other state borders were decided?
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Excellent question - I was wondering about some of these myself.
Another one: Why doesn’t the Oklahoma panhandle extend all the way to the common border of Texas and New Mexico? New Mexico juts eastward for about 5 miles and just kind of “overlaps” the top of Texas…
The Minnesota was because people thought that it contained the source or the Mississippi, and the treaty between Britain and the US which set the border took that into account.
The story on the Massachusetts-Connecticut notch was that there was a surveying error on the long east-west part. To make up for the error, Massachusetts just took one chunk of land in CT to make up the difference.
Missouri’s little notch into Arkansas had something to do with the desire of the major landowner of the area to keep his holdings in a slaveowning area, but I am not sure of that at all.
I’ve often wondered if direction-changes in borders which travel north-south (i.e., the ones on the west or east margin of a state) could be because sometimes the border runs true north and sometimes to magnetic north. I’ve never had any proof of this though; my only evidence is that sometimes a state border will run right on top of a longitude line exactly, and then veer off. Magnetic north kind of moves around, though, so it’d be hard to figure out where magnetic north was at the time the border was drawn.
I don’t understand the Missouri-Arkansas thing … weren’t those both slave states? Or was Missouri free for a while even before the 13th Amendment?
I think Missouri’s status as a slave state wasn’t secure until the Missouri Compromise, which ended up prohibiting slavery in the territories north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes north. The weird part of Missouri is south of that line of latitude I believe.
DISCLAIMER: This is coming from memory, not any reference source.
Delaware has a round border on top. Is that unusual enough?
The top half of Michigan, the Upper Peninsula, was destined for Wisconsin, but in the bloodless “Toledo War”, Michigan got it to give up claims to Toledo.
Mushrooms always grow in damp places … and so that is why they look like bumbershoots.
Northern California is always trying to split off from SoCal so it can (greedily ?) keep its water. But when the lines are drawn, SoCal gets both Disneyland and SixFlags Magic Mountain, which is too great a loss to contemplate.
Mushrooms always grow in damp places … and so that is why they look like bumbershoots.
Massachusetts: “The Enfield Jog” (jog=zig-zag, Enfield is the name of the town). Yankee magazine had an article about it 10 or 20 years ago.
Missouri: “The Boot-heel” (New Mexico has one too.)
Minnesota: “The Northwest Angle” My high school history teacher told us it was given to the US by treaty in compensation for Canada (then British) being given land near Lake Champlaign where they had built a fort. (Later surveys showed the fort was on US territory.) That teaher was full of crap, so I don’t know it it’s true. Recently, some of the people living on the Angle (resort owners, I think) want to secede from the US and join Canada. The land is not connected to Ontario, but not to the US, being separated from it by an arm of Lake of the Woods.
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Influential landowner, yes. The Missouri Secretary of State’s page on the subject makes no mention of slavery as an issue, merely that Mr. Walker preferred to be under the government of Missouri, which was on the verge of statehood, than of Arkansas, which was and which remained a territory for another eighteen years.
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I made so many mistakes in my last 2 posts, I’m afraid to say anything more, but here goes . . .
The thing in Massachusetts is the Southwick Jog, not the Enfield Jog as I reported. Locals say it’s there to keep the commonwealth from sliding into the ocean.
AWB is quite right when he says it’s Manitoba (not Ontario) that the Northwest Angle is connected to. The original peace treaty between Great Britain and the USA had the boundary running from the northernmost point of Lake of the Woods due west to the Mississippi. Unfortunately, the Mississippi’s source (Lake Itasca) is farther south than Lake of the Woods. When that fact was discovered, Britain wanted the line to run from Lake of the Woods to Lake Itasca. The USA wanted the line to run from Lake of the Woods due west. The line actually drawn was a compromise.
For the life of me, I’ve never been able to understand Georgia’s little jaunt into what legitimately should be Florida. I even asked David Feldman (“Imponderables”) about it & he was clueless.
It baffles me. Unlike Missouri’s little venture into Arkansas, there are no cities or development there; just a swamp. What gives?
I remember several years ago. (When I was but a lad) there was a much-reported movement in Escambia COunty, Florida to secede from that state and become Alabama’s 68th County. I would assume it had to do with taxation as Alabama property taxes are notoriously low.